Chris Lilley » Articles

School of Shock
Rolling Stone | October, 2007

The sharp mind behind We Can Be Heroes returns with some old favourites and a nasty new bite

Angus Fontaine

WHEN ART ROCK AND comic genius collide it often ain't pretty. For Chris Lilley, creator of this year's must-see comedy series the excruciatingly funny Summer Heights High - the creative Big Bang was downright fugly.

"It was a gig at an outdoor roller skating rink in Sefton in far-western Sydney in the early Nineties and I was the only art rock act amidst all these grunge bands," he recalls with a wince. "I did this whole weird show standing on an Ikea children's chair, almost solely for two guys dancing like crazy up front… no doubt drug induced."

As a pop star, Lilley made a killer comedian. "People came up afterwards and said: 'I didn't understand what you were singing about but it sure as hell looked funny.' It wasn't supposed to be funny in the slightest. My songs were about sadness, death, and paranoia. As a musician I was all about quirky doom, not laughs."

Not that Lilley was discouraged. He filmed the debacle and later sent it off to record companies in the misguided belief he was the future Ziggy Stardust. "I wasn't fearful or ashamed - I loved being able to do that. Being rejected that way was, for me, a huge act of rebellion."

Use your delusion. It's the key to Chris Lilley's unique brand of red-raw comedy. All his characters are familiar to us from real life, yet inhabit an alternate universe where their naivety is endearing but disturbing. And as with The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lilley's creations make us laugh so hard it hurts.

We first glimpsed the now 32-year-old's talent via The Big Bite, a short lived sketch show for Channel Seven that aired in 2003, and more potently in 2005's We Can Be Heroes, the documentary-style series for the ABC for which Lilley won two Logies (Most Outstanding Comedy Program, Best New Talent) and, internationally, the Rose D'Or for Best Male Comedy Performance. Summer Heights High reworks Lilley's core themes.

In WCBH, Lilley conjured six characters - an Asian physics student with a hankering for the stage, a Perth housewife with a dream to roll to The Rock, a Brisbane cop with a donkey schlong where his heart should be, a vile private school girl from Sydney's north shore, and feral beat-boxing twins from rural Dunt.

Each was so finely etched as to have people watching at home believing they were real. When brat diva Ja'mie was interviewed on Brisbane radio the switchboard lit up with outrage. In Perth, people sobbed when Pat Mullens met her fate side-on. Down in Victoria they're still clamouring for tickets to Ricky Wong's dreamtime musical extravaganza Indigeridoo.

For Lilley, that level of belief and inate connection with the characters is the ultimate compliment to his sublime skills as an inhabitation performer. As Dunt's favourite deaf duo Nathan and Daniel Sims often say: "It's a about keeping it real."

Like We Can Be Heroes (now screening as The Nominees to widespread acclaim on network in the U.S., U.K., New Zealand Canada, Ireland and Finland) Lilley's new project is painful close-to-the-bone comedy.

"The plan was always to pus the boundaries further and freak people out more," admits Lilley in his soft strine. "There are things in this series that will upset people, definitely, and I expect to co some backlash. But I want to take people somewhere unexpected and that means taking risks."

Heavily written (Lilley and producer Laura Waters spent two years researching and interviewing before a scene was shot) and ye almost totally improvised, Summer Heights High features a wholly non-actor cast alongside three Lilley characters - Jonah Takalua, a Ritalin-ramped Tongan school boy, Mr G., a high-camp, low-moral drama teacher (who Lilley first created for Big Bite) and mega-rich uber-bitch Ja'mie (who returns this time on a student exchange program.

Again, Lilley goes where antiseptic angels like Rove fear to tread. Drugs. Rape. Violence. Profanity. Racism. Misogyny. Pedophilia. Class war. Spasticity. A nurtured to the surface under the auspices of a film crew infiltrating the classrooms and schoolyard of a typical Aussie high school for twelve-week term.

Somehow, the results are scandalously funny. Lilley undergoes total immersion in his character and, with razor wit, fearless on the-fly performances and a studied eye for the environment (founded, on his own school daze at Sydney' Barker College), Lilley prove that, for a pop-star, he is in fact Australia's bravest TV comic.

"To be able to come up with this fantasyland in my head then have a network spend million of dollars on creating that world, for me so I can, every day for twelve weeks, go to and be part of Summer Heights High… that' pretty cool."